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Art
& History

A Brief History

St
Matthew's, Northampton, is a parish of the Church of
England in the diocese of Peterborough. It was
consecrated on St Matthew's Day,
21 September, in
1893, with Canon Rowden Hussey as its first
vicar. The tradition of the church has always been
firmly Anglo Catholic, and a daily Eucharist was
celebrated in vestments from the outset.

St Matthew's was built by the Phipps family as a
memorial to Mr Pickering Phipps (1836-1890), the
head of Phipps Brewery in Bridge Street, Northampton.
Pickering Phipps took over the family business that
had been founded in 1807. He became a prominent citizen
of the town, being Mayor from 1860-1866, a Justice of
the Peace, and MP from 1874-1880. Prior to his death he
had begun to develop a new housing estate to be called
Phippsville, on a site he owned bordering the Kettering
Road. He indicated that he would give the land for a
church and vicarage to be built for the new parish of St
Matthew's. He died

before a
permanent church could be built, but his family gave the
land and finance for the church to be built in his
memory.

His son, also named Pickering Phipps, became a
friend of the first vicar, John Rowden Hussey,
and carried the processional Cross, his first gift to
the church, at the laying of the Foundation Stone in
1891, and then again as crucifer at the dedication of
the new church 'To the Glory of God and in memory of
Pickering Phipps, JP.'

The church quickly became known for its dignified
worship and excellent music and both were developed
further in the time of Canon Rowden Hussey's son
Walter as second vicar. The latter commissioned
for the church, often at extraordinarily low cost, an
outstanding succession of fine works of art. Henry
Moore's sculpture and Graham Sutherland's
painting are the most tangible evidence of this in the
church, but musical works by, among others, Britten,
Rubbra, Finzi and Howells, and literary
commissions by Auden and Norman Nicholson
were also obtained. Canon Walter Hussey's
pre-eminence in this field of the church and the arts
was recognised by his appointment in 1955 to the Deanery
of Chichester, where he was to continue his pioneering
work.

Commissions under the following vicars of St Matthew's
have contributed to this field, and whilst its
congregation takes justifiable pride in the splendour of
the building and cherishes the tradition of dignified
liturgy and the excellent music, it nonetheless
recognises that the church exists to bring the gospel to
the local area of Kingsley.